Trust's gender pay gap is better than the national average

Posted: 28 March 2018

Monika Kalyan, Equality & Diversity Manager

West Hertfordshire Hospitals NHS Trust today published its staff gender pay gap information,
in the first of an annual cycle of reporting under the 2010 Equality Act. The trust’s gender pay gap is 14.9% against a current national mean of 17.4%.

The median hourly pay for women is 8% less than men. This compares favourably to the national median hourly pay where women earn 18.4% less than men.

As with many organisations, gender pay and bonus gaps arise because of the disproportionate number, or higher proportion, of men in senior positions. Within NHS Agenda for Change pay banding distribution, 5.7% of women are employed on bands 8a-9, while 10.7% of male employees work within these bandings. These are the most senior and therefore the highest-paid bands.

What we really need to understand is why there are more men in certain senior roles than women, not the differences in pay when people are actually in these roles.

The report
gives a more detailed breakdown of representation of the Trust’s gender
demographics that shows:

A slightly higher proportion of women employees were promoted than men.

Recruitment data for 2016/17 shows a higher drop off in percentages between short-listing to appointments for men. Of all applications received for roles within the Trust 28.5% are from men with 16.8% of these applications leading to eventual appointments.
In contrast 71.3% of applications were from women with 83% being offered roles.

The proportion of women within our consultant workforce has grown from 31.6% in 2008 to 37.2% in 2018.

Paul da Gama, Director of Human Resources, said: “Equal treatment of men and women is not just the right thing to do – it is also good for our patients and staff. I am pleased that our gender equality pay statistics compare favourably with many national benchmarks, as shown by the Office for National Statistics. We are proud of the progress we have made but recognise that more can be done to ensure women and men are more equally represented at all levels, especially in more senior positions.”

For more information on how the figures break down, see our
full report.

Ends

For more information about our hospitals, visit www.westhertshospitals.nhs.uk. You can also join our near 5,324 followers on Twitter (twitter.com/westhertsNHS) or find us on Facebook (facebook.com/westhertsNHS).

For more information, please contact Name, title in the Trust’s communications department on telephone: 01923 436 281 or email: info@whht.nhs.uk. Out of hours, please call 07900 228 031.

West Hertfordshire Hospitals NHS Trust is a large acute trust serving people from across Hertfordshire, north London and further afield. It operates from three sites at Watford, St Albans and Hemel Hempstead hospitals and sees about 600,000 patients a year. We are one of the largest employers locally, with around 4,500 staff and volunteers.